Come, Sweet Shadow
by Hekate1308
Summary: You may call me mad, but it is not madness to worship the darkness. Jim Moriarty Halloween story.


**Author's note: I wanted to write a Halloween story, but I doubted I could pull of "Sherlock and John as vampire-hunters" (or something like that) and sound in any way original, so I was rather lost.**

**And then I realized I hadn't written a story about Moriarty – if you don't count "John is Moriarty", and I don't – and this happened.**

**The idea behind it... no, I'm going to tell you at the end, I want you to guess so you can tell me even better if I pulled it off. Let's just say it's Halloween, and something in the horror-genre had to be written...**

**Oh, and it's also the very first time I ever tried first person. Let me know if it works.**

**I don't own anything and please review.**

I am not mad. Why do you call me mad? I've never been farer from madness in my life than I am now that I am dead. You may believe that, if you don't believe anything else.

I might be dead, but I am not mad. Neither am I sad or desperate. The darkness has welcomed me, and I live on in her bosom, like I always dreamed I would.

It is not madness to worship the darkness. I would call anyone mad who didn't, as a matter of fact. Like Sherlock Holmes, the one interesting person I knew who still turned out to be dull in the end. How utterly boring, to be on the side of the angels. There is nothing for me there that could tempt me. The darkness has given me everything I was, everything I wanted. I do not need forgiveness or redemption.

I was five when the darkness came to me for the first time. I was alone, always so alone, in our dark, big, dreary house, hiding myself from my father's fist and my mother's face that spoke of nothing but disappointment in her life. I wasn't enough for her to overcome it, to make an effort, to try to build a life away from him. She never tried to leave, as far as I know, and she finally died not trying when I was twelve and she just lay down and never woke up again. I don't think it was a heart attack, as the doctor called it; I think she just let herself die: She had no reason to stay alive, and maybe, if the darkness hadn't been my ally, I would have suffered.

But, by then, I had worshipped it for seven years, and it had made my cold and superior and better, and I couldn't have cried if I had tried. Others watched and found me strange – I was too young to call me mad, then. But I didn't care. I had the darkness, and the darkness was all I needed, ever since we met for the first time.

I was five, and crying, and feeling utterly lost in a world too big for me. My father shouted somewhere downstairs, because nobody had paid the electric bill and all the lights were out.

I buried my face in my hands and rolled into a ball.

And then, suddenly, I was aware that I was no longer alone.

I raised my head and immediately knew this darkness was different than the one that usually haunted my nights. It wasn't lonely, it wasn't cold, it wasn't threatening. It was divine.

It wasn't a darkness, it was _the_ darkness. And it beckoned me towards it.

I crawled towards it on my hands and knees; it just seemed too divine to approach on my feet.

It welcomed me with open arms and we became one – or, not really one, yet. That only happened when I died and finally let go of this body that kept me from merging with the darkness, like I yearned to, for too many years.

But we became partners. It offered me protection, and comfort, and power, as long as I gave to it what it asked. I promised it without thinking about it. Because for the first time in my life I felt wanted.

So, you see, there is a reason. Don't you dare call me mad, all you brothers and doctors and DIs and little girls who work in morgues and landladies. I have never been mad. You are the ones who are mad for not worshipping the darkness with me. And, now, that we are one, we must start looking for somebody else to give us the blood we need and desire. But you, you ordinary, boring people, will never do. We need someone special and lonely and destined for greater things. Like I was.

For a rather long time, I didn't know what the darkness wanted, but it was always with me, whispering, sweet calming words for a soul that had never known anything but pain, words that made me indifferent. Why should I pay attention to the world of normal human beings? They were boring; they were unworthy; they didn't worship the darkness.

My father stopped beating me after a while, because he noticed I had stopped crying and begging during his kicks and punches. He called me unnatural. I didn't care. He was just a nuisance, when I thought of him at all, and my mother was soon a shadow at the edge of my world that finally disappeared seven years after the darkness had welcomed me.

Two years after that, I realized what the darkness craved, what I had to do.

I was fourteen, and Carl Powers, though younger than me, persisted on calling me names and bullying me. I didn't really care; the darkness had made me indifferent, and I was free. He wasn't. He was just as mad as the others, not realizing that the darkness was our master.

But, one day, just after he had given me a shove, I looked at his smirking dull face as indifferently as always – until the darkness spoke to me.

_Remember what I asked. Give it to me, give me destruction, give me blood, give me death. It's your destiny. We will become one once you've proven yourself worthy._

So that was the answer I'd searched since I was five.

I'd been so right; I wasn't ordinary. I was destined for greater things.

I had to kill.

You would not call me mad if you had seen how sly, oh, how so very sly I planned Carl's demise. I didn't want to get caught; the darkness needed me, needed me until I had collected enough blood on my hands so I could join it. Once and for all.

I knew little Carl suffered from eczema; so poison was the obvious weapon of choice. I pondered for a few days which one to choose, but then, one day, in English class, I found it, found it while the darkness, as always, was swirling around me without anybody noticing.

I knew all about poisons and weapons and death; it was almost as if the darkness had told me to learn all of this, in the nine years it had been my companion, so that I would be ready when the time came.

And now I was ready.

Clostridium botulinum. Of course. Untraceable. If I timed it right, he would die at the swimming tournament he was going to visit in a few weeks' time, in front of all his friends and his family, and the darkness would welcome the blood and the sorrow. And I would be one step closer – though it was only the first step – to my goal.

On the night of the day I heard Carl had died – our English teacher had explained to us, in a sad voice (and the darkness whispered _I like it_) that there'd been an accident, that one of our fellow students (never my fellow, I was so different, I was sane, he was mad) was dead, and that there'd be a mourning service the next day – I set in my room, without any lamps on, because, somehow, I could always see my darkness much better when it was just that – dark.

And it swirled around me, beautiful and soothing and all I ever wanted and needed, and whispered _Well done_ in my ear until I fell asleep.

And I felt happier and freer than I'd ever felt before, and I know that the will of the darkness was my will too.

That's why I became the spider, sitting in its web, waiting for victims. Of course, the money was good, and I preferred to live in a way that I deserved, as long as I couldn't be part of the darkness. And I couldn't. Not yet.

_Yes, but more, _it whispered whenI stabbed a drunk man to death in an alleyway.

_Well done, but still, I need more, _it told me when I tortured a business associate who had tried to betray me slowly until his heart stopped, and the blood ran over my hands.

_You please me, _it said in my ear when Ishot a man in his living room and left the body lying in the middle on the floor, so the first thing his wife would see when she returned was her dead husband, _but it's not enough_.

_Yes, slow, slow, _was what I got when I chained a man to a wall in the cellar of an abandoned building and erected a wall in front of him, so he'd starve to death, and he cried, "For the love of God, please!"

_Give me more._

Being the spider helped, helped so much, because not even I could kill enough people to satisfy the darkness. So I had other people do it for me, too, and when it brought money, because somebody wanted somebody else gone, I was not complaining.

See? I'm not mad. No madman could act the way I have.

And then I found out about Sherlock Holmes, after his little friend had shot Jeff Hope (_Good idea, so much blood and pain and loss and you don't have to do anything, but more, more_) and the darkness swirled inside and around me and Moran, who'd just told me everything, fled from the room as if he thought I was the mad one – me, the only sane person in this mad, mad world.

_He can be our little playmate, _the darkness told me. _He seems different, his blood will taste so much better... _And then it said something that made me even happier than I was, because it would make me more than a man, so much more than a man. _He might be enough. He might be what I need to be sated for a while, what you need to become one with me. He might be enough._

Of course I couldn't just kill him. It had to be something special to satisfy the darkness.

I had to make him curious, to make him want to come to me and the darkness. Sometimes, when we were alone, I wondered if Sherlock Holmes and me and the darkness might not have made a good team, hadn't he decided to join the boring side.

_He's not like you_, it whispered, _he's not worth it, he's not worth me_.

While we were playing our game, I did what I'd always done, naturally. The darkness is a demanding master, and I couldn't let her starve just because I tried to catch the one whose blood would finally grant my wish.

At least I could also kill people and sow death while I made him curious, like General Chang or all the people that died because of the "gas leak". _It's coming closer, soon, soon_.

And then, finally I knew what to do. Make Sherlock Holmes a fraud to the world. And have him commit suicide. The pain and the hurt pride and the suffering... It would be enough.

_Yes, yes, it will be._

And so I welcomed the darkness, once again, at the end, when everything was finally over, and I pulled the trigger and felt myself become one with my master.

There's just us. And there will be for all eternity. Just us. Nothing is important, nothing truly exists, except us.

_Nothing._

And you call me mad.

**Author's note: So, time for an explanation: The idea is that Jim Moriarty lives in the world of Edgar Allan Poe, a writer I absolutely adore. There can be no comparison: He was the master of horror, and I can still remember the first time I ever read "The Tell-Tale Heart". But enough gushing.**

**Also, I am aware that this may not be "horror" per se, but – a consulting criminal who organizes crimes and is never caught and tries to force his biggest enemy to commit suicide? It's scary enough for me.**

**Oh, and this is definitely not my usual style. Please let me know if it works for you.**

**I hope you liked it, and please review.**


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